Divine Comedienne: Renee Maria Falconetti and La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc By Rick Curnutte Richard A. Curnutte, Jr. is the Editor of The Film Journal. He has studied English and Film at Ohio University and The Ohio State University.

"Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. It is a land one can never tire of exploring. There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the expression of a sensitive face under the mysterious power of inspiration. To see it animated from inside, and turning into poetry."
      - Carl Theodor Dreyer, "Thoughts on My Craft"

"The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them."
      - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

As he was preparing to direct the film that would make him legendary, Carl Theodor Dreyer just happened to taking in a performance one evening in a Parisian theater when he saw the popular stage actress Renee Maria Falconetti (a comic actress by trade) . That she was performing in a breezy comedy is perhaps one of those artistic ironies that can't be explained. Perhaps Dreyer was meant to see her so he could throw down a challenge at her feet, something she might not be able to pull off, but couldn't afford not to try.

La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc is one of those legendary films in the canon that every cineaste knows about, but seemingly many have never seen. I've attempted on many occasions to spur a conversation on Jeanne, only to be rebuffed toward a more easy film to talk about (say, perhaps, Pickpocket, or maybe Stalker, you know, something light and sugary). Jeanne is a challenging film, not just because of its tragic story (that of the famed cross-dressing martyr, Joan of Arc), but because of the unique way Dreyer approached this rather difficult material (rather than shooting the script he had been given, Dreyer decided to make a film based upon the actual trial transcripts).

Dreyer liked what he saw in Falconetti, but wasn't entirely sold on the concept of her as Joan. When she came in for a test reading, entirely without makeup or artifice, he decided she would be the perfect choice. Perhaps inspired by Falconetti's audition, Dreyer opted to shoot without any makeup on any of the actors. As he also planned on filming entirely in close up, every detail of his actors' faces would be on the screen: a testament to the persistent modesty of the director and his cast.

While he may have had the cinematic equivalent of an epiphany in his casting of the lead, he couldn't have had any idea of the material he would be given.

The late Pauline Kael, not by any means the most gracious of critics, called Falconetti's performance "the greatest performance ever captured on film." Indeed, it is a remarkable performance.

But the experience of watching Falconetti is much more than that of performer and audience. To behold Falconetti's work in Jeanne is to participate in the interaction between human beings. It's a slow, painful dance of expression and emotional openness that has never been duplicated. Her physical eloquence is exquisite, a raw, naked window into not only the final hours of a hero's life, but also of the journey of self-discovery that Falconetti must have gone through during the arduous, 18-month shoot.

With the nature of the film's technical makeup (disorienting close-ups, enhanced by sets that Dreyer had built out of proportion to each other), Falconetti is almost always required to act completely with her face. And what a face it is. Able to express nearly every emotion possible in under two hours of film, Falconetti goes from extreme to extreme, from grief to fear to progressive conviction to ungodly pain.

Joan's trial is hardly fair, of course. From the beginning, it's obvious that it's a tribunal of formality, rather than one of justice. Joan has been determined to be a sacrilegious traitor to the church. Her dressing as a boy is viewed purely as a sexual transgression, not the political necessity that it is (would a curvy woman with long, flowing blond hair have been able to inspire anything but sexual excitement in an army of men?).

Dreyer surrounds Falconetti with white. Everything around her is white, the color of death. In fact, the entire film is drenched with the aura of human mortality, from graves being dug to the taste of blood so evident on the judges' faces.

There are moments of momentous sadness here. Joan faints at one point and is bled, her blood flowing into a bowl. When she is taken outside for a final questioning, she sees a grave being dug. Her sadness is overpowering. She loves life. She decides to sign a confession so she can remain in the world that she loves, the ultimate creation of the God she honors with her life. When she meditates on her betrayal of Christ, she recants her confession, deciding to honor God instead with her death.

Joan's death is the ultimate achievement of Falconetti, probably the most emotionally wrenching thing I've ever seen in a film. Falconetti is marched past the crowd of onlookers. She's tied to the stake, her body about to be destroyed, even as her hero's soul will be immortalized. As she prepares to die, she looks upon the crowd. She notices their faces, notices a mother breastfeeding a child. Falconetti shows Joan's sorrow for the future of the crowd. She doesn't hate them for being there. She mourns the reason why they're there. Her face, that angelic face, tells the tale that we must all learn: that we should live our lives in order to transcend our physical presence on Earth. That is, we cannot be defined, ultimately, by our bodies, but rather by the way in which we use our bodies to enhance the unity between ourselves and the people who make up the world we live in.

As her body begins to burn (a cinematic sacrifice that is very obviously Christ-like, even though it is also historically factual), Joan realizes that her choice, the hardest anyone could be expected to make for himself or herself, has been the right one. Perhaps that's not the case for Falconetti herself. Though there has never been any evidence that Falconetti regretted making Jeanne, it was the last time she appeared in the film. The experience of opening herself so emotionally as an artist, along with the formalist rigor of Dreyer's shooting style (filming and rehearsing scenes in order of continuity, doing countless takes of each scene, etc.) must have taken a tremendously exhausting toll on the heart and mind of the petite, yet forceful, actress. That is, perhaps, a shame, but it's not hard to wonder if Falconetti used up a lifetime's worth of artistic expression in that singular performance. I've seen Jeanne many times now, and it never ceases to amaze and surprise me. To be sure, Dreyer's guidance of the film's genesis cannot be discounted. But it is Falconetti's transcendent work that raises the film above the level of even the most lauded films in the canon. Jeanne is a hypnotic, shimmering masterpiece, and Falconetti's performance is largely responsible for that. It is a moving, stirring, stunning achievement.

                                                                 © FILM JOURNAL 2002